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YOUNG drivers are more confident than their parents when it comes to performing basic car maintenance, a new survey has found.

Insurance company LV conducted a survey of 1,003 motorists and found that 50 per cent of drivers aged 17 to 24 said they would find it easy to perform basic car maintenance themselves.

That confidence wasn’t as forthcoming with older drivers, though, as only 31 per cent of motorists aged 45 and over gave the same response.

The research contradicts the stereotypical view that older generations have a better mechanical knowledge than young people when it comes to repairing cars.

On average, households in the UK with more than one car spend more than £390m outside of annual MOT servicing on unnecessary mechanic fees.

One reason for 17-to-24-year-olds having better mechanical knowledge is changes to the modern driving test curriculum. Since 2004, stricter testing of motorists’ knowledge about the inner workings of vehicles has been gradually implemented.

The internet is another contributing factor, with trend data from Google showing that searches for how-to videos for car and home maintenance are growing by 70 per cent year-on-year. A staggering 95 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds say they use YouTube for research, compared with 68 per cent of people aged more than 35.

Edmund King, president of the AA, said: ‘Knowing your way around a car is an important skill for drivers, but not one that everybody is confident with.

‘The changes to the driving test have, in recent years, made this basic knowledge more of a requirement for new drivers rather than an optional extra, but for some drivers it will always be a struggle.

‘Changes in technology are making cars more reliable, although it is still the basics that can go wrong, such as getting punctures, putting in the wrong fuel or running out of windscreen washer fluid. Obviously it is beneficial for drivers to be able to complete these basic maintenance tasks.’